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Just What The Doctor Ordered
After several months of auditioning various amplifiers, we are glad that RN and his
better half have finally found the amplifier that gives justice to their Harbeth
loudspeakers, by a large margin compared to the rest they've tried - the
Lavardin IS Reference integrated amplifier, the one that moved RN. The music has finally
arrived.
The
Lavardin's tonal purity reminds us of good SET amps, without the
tubes, and it was evident in this system. In addition, it easily drove the
Harbeths to a full-bodied and properly balanced sound, with superb bass
that put to shame other amps with over 100 watts that RN had tried. One
would think that the Harbeths were floorstanders. Speed and timing were
also spot on, and RN can finally listen to his fast and complex music without
feeling the instruments lagging behind the music, and making him sick.
From Tsai Ching, Count Basie, Dire Straits, Doug
MacLeod, Janis Ian, etc., RN and his better half found the system to be totally
transformed with the introduction of the
Lavardin IS Reference.
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The music
highlight of the night was a song from Taiwanese songbird
Christine
Hsu. Singing accapella (without instruments), with a backing
chrous of male and female accapella vocals, the song was one of the best
accapella performances we've heard. There was a minimum of the
usual basso backup vocals; instead, the backing vocals uncannily managed
to sound like string instruments. Brilliant !
The best
thing is that it sounded glorious. RN and his better half bought
the CD mainly for the music and previously found the CD sonics to be
average. The sonics have now been elevated to new heights with the
Lavardin IS Reference in the
system.
Welcome to
the Lavardin quality, RN,
pound for pound genuine high-end. Enjoy. |
Incidentally, speaking of Harbeth and
Lavardin, we will have more Harbeth owners pairing up with a Lavardin amplifier.
The Usher speakers in
our customer TKP's system,
for example, have already been replaced with a Harbeth HL-5 after hearing them
with Lavardins at a USA hifi show (no photos yet, photos still show Reference 3A
speakers). |